Generally, under affirmative action programmes and the like, nobody gets anything “just because of their ethnicity”. Rather, they may be given slightly reduced entry requirements, for example, to compensate for their background potentially disadvantaging them.
Surely college admissions procedures have changed significantly in the intervening 17 years, right? We're talking about the advent and removal of the 2400 point SAT, the rise of digital applications, and the rise of SAT subject tests, among other changes.
Furthermore, this specific point system in question was ruled unconstitutional and is no longer in use.
It's possible that the same organizations which were found directly discriminating on race, and desperately resist any transparency (both before and after), have secretly reformed.
It's also possible that admissions numbers didn't change a lot because "holistic" admissions discovered previously unmeasurable mitigating factors for blacks having low SAT/grades/etc.
And in yet another major coincidence, these systems also discovered that Asians are inferior in similarly unquantifiable ways, resulting in Asians who are admitted having SAT scores 450 pts higher than blacks and 140 pts higher than whites.
I don't find this particularly likely, however. Do you?
I don't think it's really a secret, the "unmeasurable mitigating factors" are society-wide discrimination issues that make life in general harder for black people. You don't have to pretend there's a secret conspiracy, affirmative action colleges are openly trying to correct for the effects of structural racism that they have no control over. This is certainly a debatable idea, but you don't need to act like it's something colleges are trying to cover up.
> You don't have to pretend there's a secret conspiracy, affirmative action colleges are openly trying to correct for the effects of structural racism that they have no control over.
This is an interesting case. In fact, you do have to admit there's a secret conspiracy, for the simple reason that "correcting for the effects of structural racism" is illegal for public colleges, and they therefore never formally admit to that justification. You're correct, though, that that is how they are generally perceived by the public and how their executives generally think about what they're doing, as far as we can tell. I think that's a pretty good match to the concept of "conspiracy".
It is illegal in the entire country. That is the general idea of the Supreme Court; it has national scope.
Specifically, the motivation "correct the effects of structural racism" is illegal when a public school is engaging in affirmative action. Affirmative action is generally legal, as long as you have a legal motive.
It turns out, though, that it's really easy for people to lie about their motives.
What supreme court decision are you talking about? You might be right, but the only decisions I could find eliminated quota systems, and required schools to take more than just race into account. I would be interested to see the case you're talking about.
1. You have a good point that "certain mechanisms" are relevant; I spoke too sloppily. Stating the goal without taking any action pursuant to the goal is, as far as I know, fine.
2. You are incorrect on the law to say "whether or not they have that purpose"; race discrimination in admissions is legal (for public schools) when performed for an academic purpose such as "to increase classroom diversity", and illegal when performed to "correct for the effects of structural racism". This is the root cause of the talismanic promotion of "diversity" today. The school's stated purpose is relevant to whether their action is legal or illegal. (If you think this is a travesty, I couldn't agree more. It's still the law.)
2b. Interestingly, some methods of race discrimination (speaking generally, the objective ones) have been found to be illegal regardless of stated purpose. That's a separate issue.
